When Nightmares Come True
by x i hear voices
Summary: If you had the chance to bring back someone you truly loved from the dead, would you? Some say that dreams come true. But what about nightmares?


It was dark. Horribly, eerily dark. They sky was a bottomless pit of black that sucked every trace of light from existence. The shadows roamed mercilessly across the valleys. They flitted between the hills and patiently waited to snatch unsuspecting prey-waited to consume them into eternal blackness. The chilled fingers of the wind brushed across the long, unkempt patches of grass, lazily blowing over large stone figures, iced over with the cold, their engraving barely detectable over the slow decay of age. Tombstones.  
  
In the undying silence, a breath was stolen between chapped lips and the spell of darkness was broken with a simple green flame at the end of a thin rod of wood.  
  
"Hurry, Wormtail," hissed a demonic voice. "The shadows will not hold back for long. It has been a long while since warm blood last touched these hills."  
  
"In all due respect, Master Malfoy," came another voice in a high, nervous tremor, "I'm becoming paralyzed in the cold."  
  
"Then maybe I should light your feet on fire to keep you warm," the first voice retorted viciously. Far in the distance, near the top of the highest hill, three figures scurried noiselessly across the vast graveyard. Two were cloaked; one with his wand in front of him, ignited and pointing to lead the way, the other had his wand pointed behind him. Two feet back, a corpse followed, levitating in mid air, hanging loosely so that it looked like it was attached by a string around it's waist to the sky. The body wore nothing but a simple pair of torn jeans and a green shirt that was smeared with dirt.  
  
The figure in front braced himself against a strong gust of wind and pushed back his white-blonde hair with a quick movement of his free hand. Lucius Malfoy tried to adjust his eyes to the unearthly blackness, but he could barely see a few feet in front of him.  
  
"We should be near it now..." he muttered more to himself than the other, shorter man. Wormtail struggled against trying to fight off the cold and trying to keep the body levitating correctly behind him. He whimpered, his entire body shivering, wishing to just get out of that creepy graveyard.  
  
Malfoy resorted to checking the gravestone heads, reading the names engraved on the stone quickly before moving on to the next one. He passed by five or six of them before he suddenly let out a cry of joy, startling Wormtail and causing him to loose the levitating body. It fell to the ground with a sickening crunch and a cry of pain.  
  
Malfoy cursed at him. "Just bring her over here so that we can do this and get it over with."  
  
More whimpers escaped Wormtail's mouth. He scurried over to the body, making a face like he didn't want to be near her, and picked her up by the arm that had just been broken as a result of the fall. She was short, very thin, and nearly passed out, making it easy for him to drag her across the dewy grass. He let her lay next to Malfoy, who kneeled down and took her flaccid face in his hands. He stared down at her with what would be pity, pushing a strand of her dark hair away from her face so that her glassy orbs could stare back at him with the purest hate. Her mouth was stuffed with fabric so she could not scream, her hands tied behind her back. Her face was bruised and her body battered as if she had gone through a great struggle to get away from these two men. She was very young; maybe only about 10 years old.  
  
"It's too bad we couldn't kill her," he said evilly, throwing down her face, standing up, and reaching inside his cloak. He withdrew a long, silver dagger, embroidered with serpents at its hilt. Malfoy ran one finger down the edge of it, staring at it with lust like it was his beloved. Wormtail recoiled backwards and almost fell. The girl tried to struggle away, but Malfoy stepped on her back and drove her into the ground.  
  
"If this works..." Wormtail sputtered incoherently, "If we actually can do this..." he was shaking so much he couldn't finish his sentence.  
  
"Don't worry, you worthless piece of shit, the spirits are transparent. They won't hurt you..." Malfoy dropped his voice and turned his back to him so that Wormtail couldn't hear what he said next. "...Much."  
  
Malfoy extinguished his wand so that once again the spell of black enveloped them. The wind stopped blowing in curiosity to what the two men were doing, and nothing but the girl's soft breathing could be heard. Malfoy lifted his foot off her back and grabbed her shoulder, flipping her and propping her up against the tombstone he was standing over. Using the dagger, he cut the binds of her hands and took one of them in his own. He opened it up so that her fragile palm was face up in his hand. Laying the sharp end of the dagger upon her skin, he slowly slit a diagonal line from the base of her index finger to the bottom right of her wrist. The girl whined behind the fabric that encased her vocal chords, and a tear fell upon her ashen cheeks.  
  
Smiling maliciously, Malfoy took her profusely bleeding hand and ran it across the gravestone, smearing the thick blood across the granite so that the name engraved shone clearly even through the darkness: Abigail McJagger. When he was satisfied, Malfoy took his wand and placed the tip upon the top of the gravestone, kneeling towards it and bowing his head. In a voice as smooth as satin, he muttered the incantation.  
  
"Nella parte più nera della notte, dò questa anima per riportare lo spirito precedentemente del defunto." It had taken a month to memorize and pronounce correctly, and yet only two seconds to mutter. Malfoy removed his wand from the tombstone and used his dagger to cut the binds on the girl's mouth. He then took a tuft of the girl's hair in his hand and pulled back her head so that her neck was exposed, and he placed the dagger on her throat. "Finish it," he whispered into her ear menacingly, "just like we practiced earlier, sweetheart."  
  
The girl hesitated, tears streaming freely down her cheeks. But she felt Malfoy pressing the dagger more firmly upon her throat and she choked out, "I give... m-my soul to... bring b-back an-another..."  
  
Then Malfoy slit her throat and threw her body aside.  
  
For a second, time seemed to stop. The world stopped spinning-even Malfoy's own heart stopped beating. Oxygen froze inside Wormtail's lungs and he had to struggle to keep breathing. Malfoy's eyes grew wide in anticipation. Nothing seemed to happen. Just as he was about to scream out in rage, a high-pitched, eerie scream filled his ears. The noise grew steadily louder and louder, throbbing against his ear drums until it was almost painful. It was a hollow, inhuman scream-throatless, emotionless, bottomless-all things horrid and painful. And then it was joined by another, and another, until it seemed like ten thousand bodiless screams were charging at the two men standing alone in the graveyard. Wormtail put his hands against his ears, but the noise would not cease...  
  
Suddenly, a thick, vibrating ray of light shot through the darkness and encircled itself around the tombstone. It formed a sort of cone-shaped barrier around the grave, like molten lava flowing around an obstacle in its path. The light grew until a ten foot wall surrounded the gravesite and Malfoy had to squint against its brightness. He backed up, sheilding his face, forgetting where and even who he was for a moment. He tripped over another gravestone and found himself on the ground facing the wall, now over thirty feet high, and he realized his wand was nowhere to be found. Panicking, Malfoy froze up, and he covered his face with his hands...  
  
Then, as if he had awaken from a dream, the noise and the light disappeared. Malfoy stood and looked around in shock. The body of the girl was gone, but next to it, sitting propped up on her own gravestone, was the body of a middle-aged woman with long, auburn hair and a thick, muscular build. She blinked repeatedly as if she had been trapped in a dark space for a long time. Her skin was white, lacking sun exposure, and she looked at her own hands as if she hadn't seen them in ages. Malfoy grinned.  
  
"Long time no see, Abigail."  
  
"Good to be back, Lucius," she said in a husky voice, scarred from smoking cigarrettes all her life.  
  
Several hundred miles away, The Boy Who Lived woke up screaming and fell off the couch, landing on the common room floor flat on his back.  
  
Ignoring the pain that shot through his spinal chord, Harry scrambled to his feet, absentmindedly reaching for his wand. He held it in front of him, ready to ward off a nonexistant enemy. However, the common room was dark and empty, the ivory light of the moon shining through his tousled raven hair. He placed his wand in the back pocket of his jeans and crossed the room into the men's restroom.  
  
The lights were off in the bathroom and the adrenaline from his nigtmare was still pumping heatedily through his veins. For a moment, Harry hesitated in the doorway, holding the door open and listening, his eyes straining to pierce through the dark. He even held in his breath. Satisfief that nothing was in there, he muttered an incantation and the torches that lined the walls burst into flame. Harry strode over to the sink and leaned on it, his hands gripping the cold porcelain, taking in a few long breaths in an attempt to calm his pounding heart. He looked up at himself in the mirror, studying his own emerald eyes, glazed over with fear and confusion.  
  
"It was a dream," he heard himself say out loud. "No one was killed, and it's impossible to raise someone from the dead." But the words didn't reassure him. Last time he had a dream of this ferocity, it had actually happened.  
  
A ray of hope suddenly struck Harry and he ran two fingers down his scar. Up until now, he hadn't even thought of it. When he woke up, it didn't even hurt. Last time he had a vision in his dreams, his scar seared with pain because Voldemort had been happy. If someone like Lucius Malfoy had been able to raise the dead-which was completely ridiculous, right?-Voldemort would have been enthralled, and surely Harry would have felt it in his scar.  
  
That was it. He had convinced himself. He stood up straight and took one last look at himself in the mirror before he exited the restroom. As he slowly climbed the staircase into the boy's dormitories, he wondered if he should tell anyone about his dream. No that was ridiculous. The only person he would even think of telling was...  
  
Harry stopped and a lump formed in his throat. His heart dropped as he couldn't stop himself from thinking, "If only Sirius were here..." 


End file.
